What the July TIOBE Index Reveals: C, Java, and Python Still Lead After 20 Years
July’s TIOBE Index, marking its 20‑year anniversary, shows C, Java and Python retaining the top three spots with narrowing gaps, highlights rising gains for C++, Go, Rust, TypeScript and others, and provides a detailed look at the top‑50 language rankings and historical trends.
Recently, TIOBE released its July programming language ranking, coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the TIOBE Index. The new list shows that C, Java and Python continue to dominate the top three positions, though the gaps between them are shrinking.
C, Java, and Python remain the top three after 20 years
The TIOBE Index was created in 2001 as a personal hobby project by Paul Jansen to gauge programming language demand. In the first ranking, the top three were Java, C and C++. Twenty years later, the top three are C, Java and Python, with the gap between first‑place C and third‑place Python now only 0.67%. TIOBE CEO Paul Jansen believes Python is most likely to claim the top spot because of its leadership in data mining and artificial intelligence.
In the May ranking, Python overtook Java to take second place, with only a 0.11% difference from Java. Although Python held the runner‑up position for only two months, Jansen’s confidence in Python remains strong.
Other notable movements in this month’s ranking
C++ increased by over 0.5%, moving closer to the top three.
Go jumped from 20th to 13th place.
Rust rose from 30th to 27th.
TypeScript climbed from 45th to 37th.
Haskell moved from 49th to 39th.
Top 10 Programming Language TIOBE Index trends (2002‑2020)
Rankings 21‑50
Rankings 51‑100 (alphabetical)
ActionScript, Arc, Awk, BBC BASIC, bc, Bourne shell, C shell, CFML, CHILL, CIL, CLIPS, Clojure, Eiffel, Emacs Lisp, F#, Hack, Icon, Inform, Io, J, JADE, Korn shell, Lingo, LiveCode, Maple, MEL, ML, Modula‑2, MQL4, MS‑DOS batch, NATURAL, Nim, NXT‑G, Occam, OpenEdge ABL, Oz, Pony, PowerShell, Pure Data, REXX, Ring, RPG, Simulink, Smalltalk, Snap!, SPARK, Tcl, Vala/Genie, VHDL, X10.
Top 10 programming languages retrospective
The TIOBE Index measures the popularity of programming languages and is updated monthly. It is based on the number of skilled engineers, courses, and third‑party vendors worldwide, using search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, Amazon, YouTube and Baidu. The ranking does not indicate the "best" language or the language used in most code lines.
For detailed ranking information, see https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ .
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